All Posts Tagged Tag: ‘Patents’

The years-long legal fight between Apple and Samsung is continuing to rage in courts around the world. Other high-profile patent lawsuits have come and gone in recent years, creating an uneasy climate in which tech companies are now engaging in an expensive patent-gathering cold war. This situation has led to surprising developments in recent years, including massive patent cross-licensing agreements …

I think that we can all agree that patent trolls are just about the worst. Even if you have no stake in the tech sector, frivolous litigation aiming to make a quick buck off of somebody else’s innovation hurts consumers in more ways than one. After years of ignoring the problem, it looks like Congress is finally starting to notice …

What’s up with Google and hi-tech tattoos? Earlier this year, Motorola showed off a new concept for wearable computing that involved the user getting an electronic tattoo. Now Google has filed a patent for a similar technology that may one day replace the now new smart watch. Google’s new patent – “Coupling an electronic skin tattoo to a mobile communication …

Back in August, following another dismal quarterly report, BlackBerry announced that it was exploring “strategic alternatives” – including the possible sale of the company. Earlier this week that possibility became a reality, with a consortium led by FairFax Financial offering $4.7 billion for the Canadian company. The buyout seemed to have been announced early, with FairFax still having six weeks …

Google announced today that it has expanded Google Patents to include documents from agencies in China, Germany, Canada and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Obviously, this greatly increases the coverage breadth of Google’s patent search engine. “Many of these documents may provide prior art for future patent applications, and we hope their increased discoverability will improve the quality of …

3D printers are expensive. There have been some valiant efforts to bring down prices, but the professional grade SLS desktop 3D printers still cost a couple thousand dollars. That all may change next year. Quartz reports that most of the patents for a 3D printing technology called selective laser sintering will expire next year. With its expiration, anybody will be …

Were you thinking about picking up an iPhone 4 on the cheap at AT&T? You might want to do so now as new shipments might not be making it here anytime soon. The Hill reports that the ITC ruled that Apple had infringed upon Samsung’s patents with the AT&T variants of the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 3, iPad 3G …

The Xbox One announcement was all about one thing – TV. It’s clear that Microsoft is positioning its next console as more than just a game machine, but it might be bringing some game elements to television broadcasts. Gamesindustry.biz reports that Microsoft has recently applied for a patent that would hand out achievements to TV viewers. Similar to how achievements …

Last week, Google announced the “Open Patent Non-Assertion Pledge,” saying that it pledges not to sue any user, distributor or developer of open-source software on specified patents, unless first attacked. Today, Google took to its Public Policy Blog to declare, “It’s time to take action against patent trolls and patent privateering.” The company submitted comments with BlackBerry, EarthLink and Red …

Google announced the ‘Open Patent Non-Assertion’ Pledge today, saying that it pledges not to sue any user, distributor or developer of open-source software on specified patents, unless first attacked. “We’ve begun by identifying 10 patents relating to MapReduce, a computing model for processing large data sets first developed at Google—open-source versions of which are now widely used,” says Senior Patent …

Twitter – the actual concept of Twitter – is now patented. U.S. Patent 8,401,009 just went through, with Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone listed as inventors. It’s a vague and overarching concept of a “device independent message distribution platform,” first filed in 2007. Here’s the abstract (aptly titled, in the situation): A system (and method) for device-independent point to multipoint …

Google has applied for a patent for something that sounds an awful lot like Facebook’s ticker feature. While we can only speculate on Google’s plans, it seems likely that they’re thinking about a similar kind of functionality on Google+. And why not? Bill Slawski at SEO By The Sea points to the patent filing for “Social Discovery of User Activity …